I was formerly with Armada Real Estate but they chose to become a ReMax brokerage and it wasn't a good fit for me.Meanwhile, pertinent to your original questions, there is legislation moving forward (I hope) that should help a lot to mitigate the flood insurance dilemma that many of us were facing.http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2014/03/04/322194.htmLets see if the senate approves this.

I'm trying to mitigate my risks upfront.

Also, you cannot do 1031s on your primary residence so this is the tax mitigation strategy for your primary.  1031s are the tax mitigation strategy for investment property.  

Patrick Philip Expect everything to go wrong, then of course try to prioritize and mitigate the risk until you're comfortable enough to move forward.

However there is a growing bank of case law that demonstrates that there can be mitigating circumstances where a hold of less than a year may be acceptable and more than a year might not be enough.  

In that case it will be very hard to refinance the mortgage and pay off the balloon payment.A couple of ways to mitigate the risk are:1) negotiate with the bank that after the 7 years the interest floats to market rates (e.g. prime + X%)The only reason smaller banks do these short term loans is because they fear of locking funds while interest rates go up and they could potentially male more money.

You can not charge him utilities once he vacates.You are fortunate he has given you heads up about his situation.Advertise and as soon as tenant moves in you stop charging him for rent.Security deposit statement needs to be sent out properly, and you would withhold deposit against unpaid portion of the lease until it is occupied, You have responsibility to show and rent as soon as qualified applicant is available to mitigate any costs.

From an investing standpoint I would also recomend that you become successful first at flipping houses and then look to adding some guys to your crew but easing into it in a way that will help mitigate losses.

There are ways to mitigate both strategies.

I believe we can reach this goal if we mitigate maintenance and repairs on our properties as well as reducing our personal expenses.